March 16, 1883.] 



o KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



155 



^TED 



MAG^UiiNJ:. Of S^JENCE 



jfePUINUryfORDED-EXACTI^ESCRIBED 



LONDON: FRIDAY, MARCU 16, 1883. 



OONTEKTS OP No. 72. 



Br Tbnmas Foster 

 Tlu' Chi'mistrv of Oookory. By 



Vt . Msttieu \Vtni(ira8 '.. 158 



; • liirih «nil Gromh of Mylh.— 



V. Br Ed««rd Clodd 159 



1 h ■ Great Comet of 1883.— III. By 



I'rofps-nrC A. YounE . 160 



How to Use our Eves.— III. By 



John lircwninj;, F.R.A S 161 



The New Skirt. By a Lady 163 



Pleasant Hours with the Micro- 

 scope. By H. J. SUck, F.G.S., 



F.n.M.S 163 



Kevibws ; Clocks sad Watches — 

 Elemeots of Weather Knowledge 161 



The Face of the Sky 166 



CoBBBspoyDEKCB ; Go the Forma- 



tion of Comet's Tails, 4c 166 



Our Mathematical Column II'B 



Our Whist Column 170 



Our Chess Column 171 



^titmt aiili 9ixt (So^^fp. 



The course of lectures by Jlr. R. A. Proctor, at St 

 James's Hall, of which the first is to be given on Wednes- 

 day, March 2 1 , is the same, but brought up to date, which 

 Mr. Proctor has delivered in all the chief cities of the 

 United States, Canada, Victoria, New South ^Yalcs, South 

 Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. The opening 

 lecture, on the Birth and Death of Worlds, has been 

 delivered now some four hundred times, yet never twice in 

 the same exact form, having never yet been committed to 

 paper. It closes with the celebrated dream by Richter, as 

 admirably translated — or rather transformed — by our own 

 prose poet, De Quincy. 



:Mr. Proctor lectured on the Great Pyramid, at the 

 London Institution, on Monday, March 12, to a crowded 

 house, many of the audience being unable to obtain seats. 

 He showed how the study of such a building throws light 

 on the nature of a people, their system of government, 

 religion, superstitions, and general character. He also 

 showed that the \arious theories according to which the 

 Great Pyramid has been described as Tomb, as Temple, 

 and as Observatory, all have their element of truth. 



AccoRDlSG to the Nc'iraslle Daily Clironich, a very in- 

 teresting competition is going on at Warkworth Harbour, 

 where, in consequence of the great pressure of business, the 

 electric light is required to facilitate the loading of coal 

 vessels at all hours of the day or night. " The Hammond 

 Brush Lighting Company have put up six lamps and the 

 Jablochkoff Company ten lamps, each connected with a 

 Gramme dynamo machine. Both lights were put to a test 

 the other night, each being used a quarter of an hour, and 

 then their combined illuminating power was tested. The 

 result in each case appeared to be \ery satisfactory, but the 

 result of the competition will not be arrived at until a 

 month's trial." Another contemporary hears that the 

 Jablochkoff candles have given great satisfaction, and that 

 they are likely to be adopted permanently. 



Ix Canada, the Welland Canal, connecting lakes Erie 

 and Ontario, has been open to traffic for some time, and 

 steamers of very considerable tonnage now pass from 

 one lake to the other. This canal is but one section of a 

 gigantic waterway which is intended to place tlie (!rcat 

 North- West in direct communication with Europe, (ireat 

 cflbrts are now bfing made to dcepcu and reconstruct the 

 various canals that now lead between Ivjngston and 

 Montreal, and when a sufficient depth has been attained — 

 uniform with that in the Welland channel— it will become 

 possible for grain vessels to load in Manitoba and unship 

 in Liverpool or London. Although this project attracts 

 little attention here, it cannot fail, says a contemporary, to 

 prove of immense consequence to the well-being of our 

 colony and ourselves. 



The gross tonnage of steel ships built last year is over 

 14 per cent, of the total iron and steel gross tonnage for 

 the year. In 1881 it was 11 per cent. 



AccoEDiXG to news from St Petersburg, the search for 

 the North Pole Expedition Dymphna has now been pro- 

 nounced hopeless. The Samoyedes, lately visiting Liapina, 

 are unanimous in asserting that no trace of ship or crew 

 can be found. The Samoyede country, we may remind the 

 reader, is an enormous frozen desert, forming the Northern 

 boundary of Asia, and occasionally traversed by the most 

 miserable of all known Nomadic races. It is remarkable 

 that the Samoyedes, originally forced back from the 

 warmer Asiatic zones by the Mongolians, have remained 

 almost untouched by Russian civilisation. They remain 

 invincible Pagans of the old type, and, like the Finns, whose 

 verbs totally want a future tense, these wretched savages 

 drag out a cheerless existence, the great aim of which, 

 rarely gratified, is to be warm enough and to eat to 

 repletion. — P. R. 



The Royal Aquarium Electric E.xhibition is rapidly 

 becoming more extensive. There is, apparently, something 

 very wrong with the Ferranti exhibit ; the third dynamo 

 has been heated and rendered useless. Is the speed too 

 high, the mechanical efficiency too low, or is the engineering 

 unequal to the task ? 



The Edison exhibit remains at most second best The 

 company make a great mistake in exhibiting only eight- 

 candle lamps, which are unable to afibrd sufficient relief to 

 the very sombre-looking decorations accompanying them. 



At an exhibition of the Edison electric light, opened in 

 (ilasgow recently, a 300-candle incandescent lamp claimed 

 special notice. It was 2 ft. C in. high, and 15 in. in 

 diameter. 



Messrs. Siemens Bros, have undertaken to instal on 

 board the Cunard steamer A urania two Siemens dynamos 

 and 500 20-candle-power Swan lamps. 



In the Strand, the " Gaiety " bar will bo illuminated by 

 means of thirty Jablochkoff candles and forty Swan lamps. 

 This is, in our opinion, a very happy combination. 



The Executive of the International Fisheries Exhibition 

 have, it is said, decided to light their galleries by electri- 

 city, and arrangements have already been made for the 

 illumination of fully two-thirds of the area. The com- 

 mittee will thus be enabled to keep the exhibition open 



